"A mesmerizing account of the well-known story of Matsyagandha
... and her transformation from
fisherman’s daughter to Satyavati, Santanu’s royal consort and the
Mother/Progenitor of the Kuru clan." - Hindustan Times
"Themes of fate, morality and power overlay a subtle and essential feminism to make this lyrical book a must-read. If this is Madhavan’s first book in the Girls from the Mahabharata series, there is much to look forward to in the months to come." - Open Magazine
"A gleeful dollop of Blytonian magic ... Reddy Madhavan is also able to tackle some fairly sensitive subjects such as identity, the love of and karmic ties with parents, adoption, the first sexual encounter, loneliness, and my favourite, feminist rage." - Scroll
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Stork season. If this was a Disney movie I'd say that's why all the babies are here but when I asked my parents where babies come from I was given the scientific explanation so please just enjoy storks. There's a great kids book called The Wheel On The School you should try and get a hold of if you're interested in small Dutch villages and how the storks relate to them but around here when a big swathe of grass is cut in the field the storks come down to hunt for insects. Took this with my phone zoom so it's a bit grainy if you look closely but I'm very pleased with it anyway. #countrylife #minnaindeutschland #storks
My number one turns 40! At least he is still young at heart. Wasn't he adorable? Doesn't he continue to be so? I love him so much that I have to tell you all even though he's not on social media and rolls his eyes at me using his baby photos for clout. #happybirthday
New newsletter out! This week, I'm thinking and talking about JOKES, how they work and how they don't. Swipe to see excerpts and also me on a bike, an old skill I'm getting familiar with again. Link in bio or mrm.substack.com! #newsletter #theinternetpersonified #jisforjoke
Mine goes: “How many hipsters does it take to change a lightbulb?” And then you say, “I don’t know—how many?” And I do this elaborate shrug and say, “You wouldn’t know it, it’s a very obscure number.”
It’s a good joke. I love good jokes. I love a clever bit of wordplay, I used to love jokes that had two meanings: a person with no arms and no legs in a pond of water! Bob! Until I realised they were kind of mean, a lot of jokes are mean, even if they are clever. (Example, from the Bumper Book of Rugby Jokes that I think I read at someone’s house? “Officer, officer, I’ve been graped!” “Don’t you mean raped, madam?” “No, there was a whole bunch of them!”)
Then there are pranks. Do you like pranks? I never did. You always have to be doing something in a prank: you could be the Prankster, a too-cool-for-school person, think Jim in The Office, who is always coming up with these elaborate tricks, you could be the Prank Audience, the person for whose benefit the prank is being played, you must always laugh and never break character by being nervous or worried that you’re being a dick, and finally, the Pranked, the person who is the butt of the joke, the ha-ha we got you!
I was talked into being the Prankster once, the girls in my class said one particular boy kept telling them all he had a crush on them, and he had to be taught a lesson. “So you tell him you like him, okay?”they said, “Then, when he believes it, you say, ‘Hah as if’ and that’ll teach him to stop saying he likes all of us.”
So, persuaded that it would be a Very Funny Thing to do, I gave in. It was sort of nice being conspiratorial with these girls, they’d been my friends for a while, but recently, I’d been feeling like they were slipping away, somehow. This brought us together, an us-against-the-world adventure! I was still cool! I still had friends! I was told not to tell one other girl in our class, also a friend, but who was close to this boy. She’d tell him, they said. Really, I think they were afraid that she would tell them they (we) were being bullies and would put a stop to the whole thing.
You can guess how this ends, right? The other girls did some build up—I was told all I had to do was nod and smile, maybe blush to confirm, which I did. The boy got really excited that someone finally liked him, even if he hadn’t thought of me “in that way” before, suddenly, he was all in. That’s what his friend told me, the girl we didn’t let into the prank. Until finally came the day we’d been planning for—he would enter an empty classroom and ask me out and I would say, “Oops, no, changed my mind” or something similar. The other girls wanted to go on a little longer, but I couldn’t bear it, the shy looks he was darting at me across the classroom, the air of suppressed glee from my other friends, the fact that he was “so excited about this.” So, one empty classroom, one boy asking me if I wanted to go out or something sometime, and me, feeling like the biggest asshole I’d ever felt in my whole life, saying what we’d rehearsed, “Oh no, I don’t like you, this was just a thing we did.” He recovered nicely, “Oh ha ha,” he said, and sped out of there and I was left, thinking about what I’d done.
Ugh, I hate pranks like that. They’re only funny if you consider power dynamics funny: one person in on the joke, one person on the outside. I hate being on the outside, when I was a child, I used to say, “Why are you joking me?” whenever I thought people were laughing at me, and I feel like that is still accurate: one is being joked. One is the Joke.
Khushwant Singh, my mum tells me, used to think the key to knowing a new country was to know their jokes. I’m not fluent enough in German to know German jokes, but here are the most representative ones I could find in English.
Germans aren’t nice punchline:
Do you know why Germans build such high-quality products? So they won't have to go around being nice while they fix them.
English/German puns:
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
East Frisians (a geographical region in Northwest Germany) are mocked:
What would you do in the event of the Great Flood? Go to East Frisia, because there everything happens fifty years later.
Government officials (beamtes) are so slow punchline:
Three boys argue about whose father is the fastest. The first one says: "My father is a racing driver, he is the fastest." The second one contradicts him: "No, my father is a Luftwaffe pilot, surely the fastest one." "That's nothing", says the third one. "My father is a Beamter, he is so fast that when work ends at 5 pm, he's already home at 1 pm."
The anti-joke joke:
Two men walk over a bridge. One falls into the water, the other is called Helmut.
And the most German and also the most baffling is a joke about a man who drives an Opel Manta called a Mantafahrer, usually thick, macho and obsessed with his girlfriend. Why the Manta? I have no idea. (K says this is also pretty classist, as the Manta was not an expensive car so you mocked people who thought it was cool.)
What does a Manta driver say to a tree after a crash? – "Why didn't you get out of my way, I used the horn!"
Other things I find hilarious in no particular order:
When K narrates what the cats are doing like they’re people. I can’t think of an example off the top of my head but it’s very funny.
Really creative insults, like calling someone a Nostril. Actually, the word ‘nostril’ is just generally hilarious I think.
When someone is bitching about someone else and they get their description SPOT ON, like you never thought about it that way before but now you can never unsee the way they squint up their eyes whenever they think they’re being really sexy, say, but wind up looking more like they’ve lost a contact lens. (FICTITIOUS EXAMPLE, FRIENDS, DO NOT GET TOO EXCITED.)
A well-timed fart, but only if you’re already laughing.
Observational humour, but only if it’s done well and isn’t sexist or racist. Something nice like how evil Modi is (the Great Silent Man) or how dumb Trump is (the Great Orange Man) or a long story about a thing you saw. (Trevor Noah is great at this and made me laugh till I nearly peed myself. His special is on Netflix.)
PUNS. Sometimes my friend Samira and I just swap puns back and forth on each other’s Facebook/Instagram posts but she’s better at the realllyyyy lame ones than me. (Sorry Samira, but if it’s any consolation, you make me laugh out loud almost all the time.)
One thing the pandemic took away, along with everything else, but one thing I didn’t realise it had taken away until all at once is the banter, the joshing. You have a Zoom meeting but with half the cameras turned off (very disconcerting when you’re doing a panel discussion) and maybe just the slightest lag in your internet connection, you can’t tell if your jokes are landing, and since I go through life with a slightly ironic remove, it’s been hard for me to connect with people at one of these public speaking things. Once someone typed “HAHAHA” into the Zoom chatbox but by then I had already moved on, so I couldn’t do what I wanted to which was stop everything and be like, “WHAT WAS HAHAHAHA? WHAT DID YOU FIND FUNNY? TELLL MEEEEE.” I’m used to pausing, watching a joke or a quip land and then working with that so all of these little faces on little screens are not for me, only for full on sincerity. I can be sincere, but it’s kinda boring don’t you think?
Which brings me to something I was thinking about last night, how I used to always say “I’d rather hang out with someone interesting than someone nice” which I suppose is still true of a dinner party or a lit fest, but I think in these pandemic times we’ve realised the value of nice. Kind people have been the best people, and funny people? Well, I guess we could take or leave them. (Of course, you could be kind and funny, but when so much of humour is directed outward, making someone or something else the punchline I think most people just pick one.) (In India, of course, our own stand up comedians are in a bit of an existential crisis because a lot of their jokes are casteist and/or sexist and when this was pointed out to them they went into a collective flail and now I think they don’t know how to make jokes any more.)
(A shout out here for Bo Burnham’s sort of comedy special Inside which deals with the idea of humour during strange times quite well.)
We are almost done with our time in the countryside. Secured a tiiiiny sublet in Berlin, right next to this amazing park called Templehof (it’s the old East Berlin airport which they’ve converted into a public park). The flat itself is just a one room set as they used to say in Bombay, but it’s on a quiet road while also being close to everything.
Monday is K’s FORTIETH birthday and we are taking a little day trip into Bonn which is nearby with his parents. Otherwise we don’t have much planned for our last week here (we leave on Thursday) except I’m trying to get better at cycling so I can be a True European. (Do not worry, parents and other well-wishers, I won’t be going on the main road with my bike—a folding cycle we are borrowing from K’s parents—just around the Templehof park.) You actually don’t forget cycling I’m pleased to say, so I’m really only having difficulty with going up hills which is because I am very unfit. (I just found my FIRST GREY HAIR so I’m edging towards DEATH and DECAY. It’s been a nice life. It’s been a good youth. GOODBYE SWEET WORLD, GOODBYE.) (Not you, you look amazing with your grey hair and you’re obviously very young and fit, it’s only me I’m talking about here.)
Here is a photo of me on a bike, my first day riding it:
And here is a photo of the garden peonies currently on my desk, because I finally see what all the fuss is about re: peonies.
If you liked this post, perhaps you’d like to Buy Me A Coffee? I never know how to ask for tips so I’m just leaving out my virtual tip jar, but you guys have been amaaaazing, so thanks so much for all your support.
Where am I?The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week.
Who are you?Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
Last of the summer peonies, and last wildflower bouquet I think. We leave next week for Berlin, swapping all this for a city life. I've come round to the countryside in the end, would've been nice with 5x fewer insects but the bike rides are great and it's gotten cooler again so the sun is friendly. But a week is a long time so still some golden days to savour now I know they're ending soon. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone? #minnaindeutschland #countrylife #peonies
Small town nearby's claim to fame is that Elvis was posted there once. ("during WWII?" I ask breathlessly, imagining Elvis vs The Nazis, coming soon to a screen near you! But no, "Elvis is not THAT old," K says, witheringly.) I had to take a photo making Elvis face anyway (zoom in) and also of the crossing light (swipe.) This town also has an Elvis FESTIVAL apparently full of cover bands and lookalikes but alas, in September, when we will be back in Delhi and packing up so no King for us. #minnaindeustchland #countrylife #elvispresley
One of the great joys of my post quarantine life is that we have access to K's mum's car, which I am now wildly in love with in a way I don't think I've ever been with any other car. It's a Mini Cooper! It's a CONVERTIBLE! and so despite the terrible heat wave we had (which is always weird, being hot in Europe, no?) we've been driving around with the top down, blasting music (lots of 99 Luftballons natch) and feeling very cool. This from yesterday when we daringly decided to go to the next village to have a DRINK in PUBLIC. Every place was ironically too crowded for our comfort so we settled on a small biergarten by the city hall (called the Rathaus which amused me) and K had a beer while I confused the waiter by ordering a vodka orange juice (the only non beer drink they had.) it was small, quiet, very basic and GLORIOUS. We had to fill a contact tracing form though which is apparently par for the course around here, a good idea I thought. Masks still on indoors but we sat on the patio. #minnaindeustchland #countrylife
I thought a pastoral classic was appropriate for my current surroundings. Rereading this for the first time since college (where we had a terrible professor for it so I don't remember a word). Lovely and sad, not quite as good as Middlemarch but I was into it anyway . George Eliot is tying with Jane Austen for classical favourite. You should read it, if only for the tumultuous and forever misunderstood Maggie and her tragic life. #themillonthefloss #georgeeliot #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #121in2021
Apparently even at my great and advanced age, I like to climb on bikes and make vroom vroom noises. (OUT OF QUARANTINE! we celebrated by going on a walk, forgetting we have not walked for 2 years. Dead today, please send good wishes for my poor legs.) #minnaindeustchland #countrylife #motorcycles #bikerwoman
I am STILL in quarantine. It is never ending and somehow it is only two weeks. Those two things seem impossible to reconcile with each other—how can this thing that goes on and on and on be defined by such an earthbound concept as TIME? However, here we are, a mix of absolute indolence, go into the garden just to lie down on the garden sofa (as opposed to the inside sofa which also we spend a lot of time on) (separately, but since there is only ONE inside sofa, we have now started fighting over who gets to lie down on it), clothes without buttons that you just pull on to your body; but also completely “we want to go somewhere and do something” energy. How is it different from being cooped up in our Delhi flat for all this while? I’ll tell you: the outside is different. Germany’s doing pretty well, pandemic-wise, at the moment, I think the last numbers I checked were like 500 something daily cases? so they’re opening up like anything. I am skeptical because we’ve seen how this works, they’ll open up, everything will go bad, they’ll close up again, but unlike Delhi where everyone was sheltering in place, the Germans are out and about, and I have FOMO. (There’s a trend piece about that in The Cut because, of course there is.) (We are also getting our second dose of the vaccine in a few weeks, so we’ll be fully vaxxed very soon.)
(I wrote that paragraph yesterday and today, it turns out, is the last day of our quarantine. Time is so strange.)
Before I left Delhi, I got to thinking—because my mother mentioned it—about the opening pages of The Namesake (a beautiful book which you must read if you haven’t already) where pregnant Ashima, far away from home, is making her own version of jhal muri by putting mustard oil and chilli powder on Rice Krispies. I was really thinking of how far away from home Indians tend to go—whether it’s young people from a village going to a city to earn more money, or people going overseas for work, or people marrying people already overseas and flying to them, leaving their old families behind and starting an entirely new one. What courage it must have taken to do that then, before the internet and cheap flights and cell phones shrunk the world, to go off to a brave new world, not knowing when you would return and who you’d ever see again.
Yesterday, in a glum mood, I acknowledged I was homesick. I mean, not homesick for Delhi just now, of course. I’m homesick for Delhi then, Delhi as it could be, Delhi wrapped up in its Delhi shawl coughing its genteel little Delhi winter cough. (Here’s an essay I wrote a while ago about being nostalgic for a certain time and place.) My allergies, speaking of coughing, have cleared up in some respects and have reemerged in others. Turns out, I’m allergic to grass pollen. I never knew this before because I’ve never been around so much grass being cut. Back home, there’s this giant park next to our house which had gardeners cutting the grass all the time, so maybe I did sneeze and cough then too, but I put it all down to pollution, dust, cats, smoking.
Oh, smoking. K suggested I give it up for the two weeks we were in quarantine and with great reluctance I did, but it hasn’t been so bad. My biggest fear was how will I drink because I like the occasional glass of wine, the evening g&t, and I associate that with smoking, but I managed, managed to enjoy myself even. My self-imposed detox ends in two days and then I can go back to the occasional cigarette when I drink or something (I have to, don’t judge me) but it was good for me to have a reset. I would rather not be a regular smoker OR a non-smoker. There must be some happy balance in the middle.
I am not always glum, but it seems to me I have been exceedingly so these past two weeks. Like in the early days of Delhi’s (first) lockdown, I paced and thought thoughts. The garden in this house is lovely, the house itself is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever lived in, the trees outside are very nice, the birds are loud with strange exotic song and yet, and yet.
(Want to list some things I love over here in case you think I’m being too negative, but you already know, na, the things I love? Life is very easy in terms of STAYING ALIVE, tap water is drinkable, air is breathable. There’s SO MUCH CHEESE that I myself am starting to resemble a wheel of camembert. The weather dial is set at Perfectly Pleasant all day, slightly hot sometimes, slightly chilly in the evenings. If I could think of a Cool Band off the top of my head, they’ll probably play in Berlin. Smaller: K and I hang out a lot (we were getting into a bit of a rut in Delhi), and it is great, like a honeymoon. Even smaller: I’ve installed the GIANT ASS TV right in front of the bed so I stick in my Chromecast and watch television like a QUEEN.)
I think until we get out feet under us in some tiny little studio apartment in Berlin, where the whole house will probably be the size of the bathroom in this one, until we are walking down a city street and looking around, and breathing the city air, and figuring out where exactly we want to plant the flag of our new life, I’m going to be a little like this on the inside. This life is temporary, it doesn’t belong to me, I’m only visiting. It feels a bit like we’ve retired, living here. Long walks with dogs are on offer. Gardening is too. These are all GREAT, don’t get me wrong, if I was on holiday and wanted a break from my busy urban life. But I’m impatient now to move on, to start living. This is not a holiday. All the same, I keep reminding myself that I should enjoy myself, I’ll miss this. I’m living permanently in future tense, when I am in my big city apartment I will miss this large sprawling house and garden. Everything is so unsure—there are no flats or how will we fit our cats and us into this or I need a guest room for visitors or the neighbourhoods we like are too expensive so we have to start looking around for others.
One night I wake up, around 3 AM, and I do the thing I’m used to doing, lulling myself back to sleep by focusing on some sort of white noise, the AC, the fan, some cars outside, the air purifier, and I cock my ears here into ringing silence, silence so loud I can feel it in my eardrums.
But I’m getting a bit more settled in my mind if not my body. At the suggestion of an Instagram friend (thank you Malati!), I decided to start reading up on German mythology as a way to anchor myself here. It was an excellent idea.
Already I am fascinated by the idea of Rübezahl (I had to copy paste that ü, because there seems to be no easy way to get it on my keyboard, tips much appreciated for Windows. I don’t want to switch to a German keyboard also because that’s too confusing.) who is a trickster, my favourite sort of god, usually a giant or a gnome or a spirit. He gets his name from the fact that he kidnapped a princess and then turned some turnips into people who then wilted when the turnips would have. Rübezahl is a pejorative, you call him that and he’ll be pissed, and he’s also god of the weather, so you’ve got to be nice. Had to, I mean. Now Germany is primarily Christian, but these are all the old pagan myths, some dating back from pre-Norse time. This whole area shared a bunch of gods, so Odin is Wuotan, for instance. (Wagner turned him into Wotan for easy pronounciation) or Thor is Donar (which is also K’s favourite food here in Germany) (fun fact: “Thursday” in German is “Donnerstag” for “THOR’S DAY” get it get it? And “donner” also means “thunder” so it’s all connected once you know what to look for.)
There’s also the original Lorelei which all my fellow Gilmore Girls fangirls will appreciate. She’s a siren who lives in the river Rhine.
The boatman aboard his small skiff, -
Enraptured with a wild ache,
Has no eye for the jagged cliff, -
His thoughts on the heights fear forsake.
I think that the waves will devour
Both boat and man, by and by,
And that, with her dulcet-voiced power
Was done by the Loreley.
There’s a small statue of Lorelei there now so you can go admire it if you’re ever in the area.
But the one god who really resonated with me was Frau Holle. Most people just know her from the Grimm’s fairy tale which goes like this:
There was this widow with a step daughter and a bio daughter and she hated the step, even though she was beautiful and hard working and spoiled her bio daughter. The step falls into a well and meets an old woman for whom she starts working, including shaking out her feather bed so that it snows in the world.
Eventually though—even though her new life is better in every respect—the girl starts to miss home and asks to go back. The woman (Frau Holle) sends her off but not without first showering her with gold. When she gets home, her stepmother and sister are like, “we want gold too” so the other daughter (the lazy bad one who always gets punished in stories like this) sets off but she’s very lazy, so Frau Holle covers her face with unwashable pitch and sends her back. The end.
I think this story does a disservice to the idea of the real Frau Holle, who was actually this really amazing mother goddess figure, pre-dating most of the pantheon. She was the goddess of children who died in infancy and also of witches and women. Before there was Christmas, winter was associated with death, and Zwölften (the original name for the Twelve Nights) was the time the spirits were said to roam the earth. This was Frau Holle’s domain, she sat with her spinning wheel and spun spirits to life or let them walk again or something. The children sometimes called her the Dunkel Großmutter (Dark Grandmother) which I think is also so cool. There’s also this thing in Teutonic mythology called The Wild Hunt, which is a hunt filled with supernatural beings (CREEPTASTIC!) and even though it’s usually Odin/Wotan who leads it, sometimes Frau Holle does too.
So you see, she’s extremely interesting. And also the perfect deity to welcome me into Germany. I’ve noticed that all the German stuff I know, the pop culture, the books etc etc had to do either with the Nazis or with the Wall and East and West and all that, which is fine, those are Very Dramatic Times in this country’s history but I also wanted more. I wanted to know what happened before, in the 1800s say (I need to get my hands on a copy of Buddenbrooks) or after 2001 or something. I’ve read and watched so much about WWII, I could probably give you a mini-lecture on the subject but I know nothing about Friedrich the Great, for example. (I did buy this terrific book called Berlin: The Story Of A City for my birthday last year and have carried it along here, which covers a lot of the royal dynasties.) (Also currently reading March Violetsby Phillip Kerr, which is, you guessed it, a story about Nazis. But like a murder mystery in Berlin, so that’s okay.) (Up next, Visitationby Jenny Erpenbeck.)
I like knowing things, I realise. There’s some fun into flailing out into the unknown with no map or things to guide you, but I enjoy being anchored by information. Right before I left Delhi, I had two Google alerts set up for “Berlin” and “Germany,” English-language news, so I could stay abreast of what was going on. That’s helping too. I don’t have all the context, but I’m getting there. It’s no longer this large land mass full of foreign people and their foreign ways, bit by bit, things are coming into focus.
I recently *ahem* set up an online tip jar? Over here at Buy Me A Coffee. So I’m going to slip that link into this newsletter from here on out. It’s a nice way to support my writing (yay!) and also let me keep this newsletter free and regular. Here’s the link again.
Where am I?The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week.
Who are you?Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
New week, new wildflower bouquet! Cheating slightly because I slipped some elderflower in there and technically that's off a TREE. I'm still being bucolic and pastoral and so on and so forth. I have nothing new to say from quarantine. Thank goodness for gardens but whyyyy are they so full of nasty buzzing little insects? Ugh. Always knew I was a city person but it's always when I'm someplace rural that I realise HOW MUCH. Even Goa was too village-y for me, what luck will this little village (pop. 200) have? "So what fun things are there to do around here?" I asked my father in law yesterday and he said "there's the woods" so yes, out of quarantine to go deeper into the trees. Luckily I like trees. #quarantinediary #minnaindeustchland
You must let me know if these updates get too much but I'm enjoying showing you all of it. I really did sit on this swing just for the 'gram. One week done of our quarantine, one week to go. Then we are released... To go for bike rides in the forest. Can't waittttt for Berlin next month but also desperately reminding myself that pandemic Berlin will be very different from 2017 Berlin. Germany's numbers are low though so there's that, I'll try to tread the line between paranoia and carefulness. Life as usual is going to be weird to see and I'm almost angry about it because we could've had a normal life too if the response hadn't been fucked up on every turn. Sigh. Not quite the caption you were expecting on this swing photo eh? #quarantinediary #minnaindeustchland
Another book by the "other" Elizabeth Taylor (the first one I read was Angel which you will find if you scroll to November of last year.) Recently to my great joy, I've been reading more and more books about the experiences of being old (The Thursday Murder Club is one such example and that was sweet and forgettable.) After reading this, written in the 70s, I actually got really angry that this author is "the other Elizabeth Taylor" when really we should be calling the actor that. Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont is the story of Mrs Palfrey, a woman who looks like a distinguished man, a general in drag, and her moving into the Claremont Hotel, which has a residential package for the elderly. Without condescending or being too mean, Taylor gently skewers all of humanity but so lovingly that you're shaking your head going "ah yes." Lots of moments that make you smile to yourself, and equally lots of moments that are so sad. I finished it last night and all I wanted to do was think about it and talk about it so please read it and let's DISCUSS. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #121in2021 #elizabethtaylor #mrspalfreyattheclaremont
Hallo from Germany! Side note: do you not just LOVE that “hello” in German is just “hallo”? “Hallo” is incidentally how a schoolfriend of mine used to pick up her phone, a short breath, and then her nasal, unexpectedly sexy voice, “Haan-lo?” I haven’t talked to her in decades, but I still remember her voice saying that particular greeting.
It is 9.19 in the morning, and because we have taken to going to sleep as soon as the sun sets—10.15 pm most nights, so weird—we are also waking up bright and early at 6.30 most mornings, and since today was my therapy day, it worked out well for me.
Oh yes, I have a bunch of new subscribers! Hello! Or HALLO, if you prefer! You probably came over here from the Splainer shout-out, I’m doing a q&a with them, and they are excellent (I just renewed my subscription) so please subscribe to know more (about the WORLD IN GENERAL, not just me and my q&a in beautiful non-jargon-y language. Worth every rupee.)
Today’s edition is more of a short one, to celebrate our five year anniversary! Congratulations to you if you have been reading this from June of 2016 and also congratulations to you if you just subscribed and you’re like “oh yay more reasons to celebrate!” and of course, congratulations to ME for sticking to it and sending out little notes from my life etc etc. The next letter I send you will be about my German experience and Indians abroad and so on (J IS FOR JOURNEYS!) but this one is just to mark five years so if this was a TV show, this would be the clip show episode (which I never loved but some people must’ve, so I’m hoping that some people is you?) (besides only about 28 of you (hi friends!) started reading this when I signed you up in 2016 and we have so many more people here now). You should all say hi to each other in the comments! I bet you’d all get along. (Did you know I know a couple, happily married and with a BABY, who met in the comment section of my old blog? No, truly!)
I started with 28 followers and now I have, as of this minute, 1,218, which is not a lot in terms of other social media figures, but I like this space so much more than any of my others, so there’s that.
Where to drink: **Steam at the Rambagh Palace is inside a literal TRAIN and this made me very happy. Unfortunately I was feeling slightly under the weather so could not linger for very long, but I loved it. A TRAIN. I like bars---as I told S later--that have special theme-y things, more props if they're actually built INSIDE a replica of the theme. This may not be very adult, but drinking is adult, so I feel like that makes up for it. ** Bar Palladio at Narain Niwas is a revelation, it's all blue walls and pretty lights. The wait staff stuck us in a brightly lit back room at first, but we made a fuss and so they grumpily moved us to the front and after we ordered a bottle of (excellent) wine, they were positively cheerful. Lovely place. Very Wes Anderson. **
In October of that year, we decided it was time to move to Goa. (This phase of part-time Goa lasted about a year and a half, but the upkeep on the old house was too much work.)
This week in Things That Are Inconvenient About Goa Should You Choose To Live There Full Time: 'coz you've gotta take the bad with the good, guys. Thing one: garbage collection happens ONCE A MONTH in villages like the one we're living in, even if said village is home to many bustling restaurants and bars. Most people drive their garbage over to a literal hill of garbage on top of another hill, but we intend to compost + separate. Still, is a pain in the ass. (Alternatively, you can pay Rs 20,000 a month for a private garbage collector to come.) Thing Two: Everything. Is. Very. Slow. That's people, services, even your spotty Airtel signal. Prepare for patience, and not being able to get any work done involving other people between about 1 pm to 4 pm. Thing Three: The wild is waiting. And the wild is usually winning, too. Abandon your house for the monsoon and sunnier climes and come home to mystery smells, crawling creatures and things that go bump in the night.
Oh, but the sky is so blue.
Posts that still make me laugh all these years later:
We got burgled in September 2017. (This isn’t an announcement OR an achievement, but it didn’t fit anywhere else and it had a major effect on me and I’m still working through some of that trauma, so I feel like it fits here.)
The month after that we got married. (Unrelated. I think.)
My Asian Odyssey, part one (and I had part two and three also but Substack seems to have swallowed them? Very weird.)
I realise I have definitely repeated myself over the years, so thank you for putting up with me so sweetly, and here’s to BRAND NEW STORIES, Meenakshi, don’t be lazy.
I am also only in 2019 by now, but this newsletter is going to be FAR TOO BULKY if I keep going (plus how will you read all of it?) so I will stop. Everything is in the archives, you can also tell me what your own favourite posts are. All right here in the comment section. (I am really desperate for you all to start chatting to each other, like a nervous host at a party, I just want everyone to get along!)
Also if you have any questions about starting and building a newsletter, I will be happy to help. Remember I don’t get paid for this though, so I can only advise from an “I enjoy doing this as a hobby” point of view.
Have a great week! I will write to you sooner than you think with regular programming but I might also be quiet for a while, who knows? It’s all part of the mystery of life.
xx
m
Where am I?The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week.
Who are you?Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
Nature is so boring, stuck in the house, the only drama that's happening is outside in the sky. (shortly after I took this photo I went to sleep because this is my new Country Life, to bed at 9.30 pm, awake by 6 am with the birds.) (I can't wait to get to Berlin but yes, I'm joking about nature. It's not...the worst.) #minnaindeustchland #quarantinediary
K's parents asked me what food I'd like to have stocked in the flat we're quarantining in. I said bread cheese etc oh and one bottle of Tabasco if possible. This is the result. I've never felt so loved. ❤️😂 #minnaindeustchland #quarantinediary
No rest for the wicked, she says as she sets up her work space and then instantly lies down on the padded bench next to it. It's still cold enough to run the heating at night so we lifted this desk in from the frigid bedroom to the sunny sitting room where we are currently also eating and reading and exercising (I did some hula hoop this morning to justify dragging it all the way from Delhi.) the only thing that would make this feel more exactly like home (K and I locked inside a flat together, the outside world just theoretical at this point apart from a pretty view) would be three fat cats who I already miss. #minnaindeustchland #quarantinediary
Hello from Germany, where after several thousand hours in an airport and on a plane, we have finally reached K's parents house where we must quarantine for the next two weeks. It's usually ten days, but alas, we're from a high risk area. I've never had so many questions asked at the check in desk at an Indian airport before. Got a little fresh air in the garden before we locked ourselves in the house again, and picked some wildflowers to take inside with us. I don't know all the names but the spiky purple ball thing on the left is wild garlic, the tiny blue ones are forget me nots & there are some daisies in there too. The forget me nots seem especially appropriate right now that I'm thinking of you. More soon. #minnaindeustchland #wildflowers #garden
Did not expect a book about training a bird to give me, as the kids say, "all the feels" but Helen Macdonald writes about birds like they're dogs and about people like they're isolated deserts of loneliness and when the two meet, it's everything. A gorgeous book, even if you're not as into nature writing as I am. Difficult to read though if you've lost a parent because it is all about the mourning period and coming out on the other side. I am about to buy her second book about birds because suddenly all I want to read is Helen Macdonald writing about the birds in her life. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #121in2021 #helenmacdonald #hisforhawk
